Attendance tracking

averettpilot

averettpilot

Well-Known Member
Curious how other airlines track attendance and what, if any, penalties come with missing time?

My company has a points based program where certain absences accrue points. Your discipline level is tied to the amount of points you accrue on a rolling 365.

Ours has recently been leaked to an aviation fb page so this may be outing what company I work for (not that I really care), but I’m just curious how others do it. First airline for me.
 
averettpilot said:
Curious how other airlines track attendance and what, if any, penalties come with missing time?

My company has a points based program where certain absences accrue points. Your discipline level is tied to the amount of points you accrue on a rolling 365.

Ours has recently been leaked to an aviation fb page so this may be outing what company I work for (not that I really care), but I’m just curious how others do it. First airline for me.
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We had that at Endeavor. I was based in NYC and New York law actually prohibited that practice. Spirit and AA didn’t have a policy. You might get a check in phone call if you bang out for a long stretch, but that’s mainly a welfare check of sorts.
 
The only way you got in trouble at Spirit for the use of sick leave is if you either 1) travelled while absent from work or 2) were an idiot posting about calling in sick when not sick. Any contact you got otherwise from the CPO was a “hey…you’re not face down in a ditch, are you?” sort of interaction.

I was rarely sick at that airline compared to at the regionals, where it felt like I got a head cold every other month.

SouthernJets has a whole sick leave verification regime (two of them, actually—one is after a certain amount of use and another is “well, I, a chief pilot, believe individual circumstances create a good faith basis to ask you about this”) in the contract. Last year’s new agreement limited the usage of good faith basis calls; a pilot who uses less than 50h of sick in the previous sick leave year is exempt from a good faith basis sick verification.
 
Autothrust Blue said:
SouthernJets has a whole sick leave verification regime (two of them, actually—one is after a certain amount of use and another is “well, I, a chief pilot, believe individual circumstances create a good faith basis to ask you about this”) in the contract. Last year’s new agreement limited the usage of good faith basis calls; a pilot who uses less than 50h of sick in the previous sick leave year is exempt from a good faith basis sick verification.
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Seems kinda silly for them to even bother asking questions, when the sick leave accrual policy (i.e. use or lose) effectively incentivizes folks to use all or most of their sick leave each year. At least if I understand their contract correctly.
 
///AMG said:
Seems kinda silly for them to even bother asking questions, when the sick leave accrual policy (i.e. use or lose) effectively incentivizes folks to use all or most of their sick leave each year. At least if I understand their contract correctly.
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You do, and concur.
 
I've never personally experienced any repercussion for calling out sick. Although I rarely do and only when I'm not feeling well. I have heard of issues with pilots calling out sick often and getting a call from a base chief. It sounds like it is tracked but the bar is set so high for sick use I've never figured out where the threshold is for contact from management. So I don't know what it is.
 
BobDDuck said:
We don't have anything. If you screw around a lot, the CP may reach out and ask what's up. The flight attendants have some kind of program, but management leaves us alone.
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Same. There are some old timers that have a schedule when they are going to call out in order to retire with 0 hours left. As long as that is still going on those of us just calling out occasionally fly well below the radar.
 
Kingairer said:
Same. There are some old timers that have a schedule when they are going to call out in order to retire with 0 hours left. As long as that is still going on those of us just calling out occasionally fly well below the radar.
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If you retired at the mandatory retirement age from Spirit after a given interval of service (I want to say it was 20 years?), your sick bank was paid out at the hourly rate effective when you retired. I sort of looked at this and shrugged when I worked there, thinking that if I did, I did, and otherwise if I was sick, I'd use the time we negotiated for, and so on. I wound up having something like 130 hours of sick when I got the new job; they had a sick leave donation program too (brilliant!) and I donated it to the LCP who did my Captain OE, who had a very sick child.

It's possible to create the other incentive here too, is the point.
 
AzulNorte has a "PTO" shell game system that is weirdly mutually beneficial - even though the accrual could be more IAW industry accrual.

  • Sick... call in sick. Deduct PTO.
  • RSV sick has it's own deal... 4.2 hrs for the day - you can PTO or call in sick depending on the grid. You can't get your time back though.
  • Don't want to fly and the 6 RSV grids are green for your trip - PTO it and get paid. (or pick something else up and get that PTO back)
  • Sell back above 100 hrs down to 100 hrs.
  • Sell back 25% of your bank each Dec. no matter what you have.
  • Convert 35 hrs into a paid vacation week for weeks left over in the last round of the robin bidding system.
  • Bank up to ~500, get big check upon retiring or separation.
It's a learning curve to figure out how to manage it. It *might* encourage flying when not 100% if you are a bank/sell type pilot. It does provide flexibility ala SWA-type scheduling. Pilots tend to fall into two camps - Zero hours or a gazillion hours. It's a QOL enhancer along with a illness management system.

I think I got all the conditions... any other Azul people can weigh in if I missed something.

Azul also has a set of rules as per the OP's question... but if you are sick, you are sick. It's a certain # of rolling calls per 365 lookback, calls over holidays, etc. IMHO you have to be a huge abuser of the policy & not on FMLA for when the actual "Section 19 hearing stuff" happens. When you are sick... call in sick. DON'T share the love with your fellow pilots.
 
Nothing at the redneck Texas trailways, one will get a call after a few calls in a row to see how you are doing and if they need to get the ball rolling on disability but that's it. You can bank up to 1600tfp but there is no buyback at retirement. With the new contract company LOL kicks in after 60 days so its beneficial to keep at least a few months in there plus if you burn at least one sick tfp/month while you are out you will continue to accrue vacation.
 
Roger Roger said:
Word from our new hire chat was someone on probation got asked for a Dr note. Not from our class and no other context.
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My experience has been like Skaning's. I had to bang out sick last week for legitimately being sick, and never heard another word about it. I've used sick leave I think 3 times since I've been here, and two of them were confirmed covid, with this most recent one being the general crud caught from young kids in the house. I've never heard of someone having to produce a Dr note, which seems pretty common at SJI with their 50 hr "lookback" policy I might add. I don't even know how I would go about getting a retroactive Dr note for the cold. I don't even have a doctor. Seems crazy, and entirely based on some military policy/instruction, adopted by an airline that wears military uniforms to fly.
 
///AMG said:
My experience has been like Skaning's. I had to bang out sick last week for legitimately being sick, and never heard another word about it. I've used sick leave I think 3 times since I've been here, and two of them were confirmed covid, with this most recent one being the general crud caught from young kids in the house. I've never heard of someone having to produce a Dr note, which seems pretty common at SJI with their 50 hr "lookback" policy I might add. I don't even know how I would go about getting a retroactive Dr note for the cold. I don't even have a doctor. Seems crazy, and entirely based on some military policy/instruction, adopted by an airline that wears military uniforms to fly.
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I mean, there was some dude at SkyWest that had well over 60 days of sick calls in his first or 2nd year with no injuries or major illnesses and he was bent that the company was looking into it. Pretty sure he got fired. They’re out there among us.
 
word302 said:
I mean, there was some dude at SkyWest that had well over 60 days of sick calls in his first or 2nd year with no injuries or major illnesses. They’re out there among us.
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Yeah, those guys exist for sure. And I've heard of a guy, at our place, who put in a bunch of trip trade/drop requests, which didn't take. And then dropped sick leave on the trip in question in the end and got fired. There is always a dumber dum dum. Though there had to be more to that story I'd think. Too bad PBS didn't exist back then. Don't even need vacation or trades to get the days off you want now, holidays included. I just got like 20 days off in nov, including most of turkey day week, just by bidding for it.
 
Yet we still have guys who bang-out sick when it convenient or literally put on social media “Oh man, look at that last turn on this trip next month, amma be fatigued for that one”

Just wait for the Feds to start the “Hey, how come so many of your pilots are having fatigue/fit-to-fly issues when trip construction is accordance with the FARs and the pilot contract? :)
 
derg said:
Yet we still have guys who bang-out sick when it convenient or literally put on social media “Oh man, look at that last turn on this trip next month, amma be fatigued for that one”

Just wait for the Feds to start the “Hey, how come so many of your pilots are having fatigue/fit-to-fly issues when trip construction is accordance with the FARs and the pilot contract? :)
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I am constantly amazed at how stupid supposed smart people are.
 
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